


Ravenfall

by 221b_hound



Series: Blood Brothers [12]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Canon Divergence - The Reichenbach Fall, Character Turned Into Vampire, Epic Bromance, Gen, Precognition, Spirit Animals, Vampire John, fox spirits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-08
Updated: 2014-01-14
Packaged: 2018-01-07 23:51:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 19,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1125858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sally Donovan has precognitive dreams. She dreamed that Sherlock threw someone from the roof of a building and that John Watson died. She saw a raven fall, and bodies by the wayside. </p><p>Now she knows that John Watson is a vampire and dead already. She knows that Jim Moriarty is a fox spirit and that he has infected Mycroft Holmes. She knows she's in too deep, and that whatever her dream means, someone dies today.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Moriarty is playing games with them. Sherlock thinks he knows what it is at last - but he might have worked it out too late.

The puzzles became more deadly.

The boy they saved, and the woman in the supermarket car park. The old woman, too. The man in Piccadilly Square threw himself under a passing armoured truck hoping to save someone, at least, so only killed himself and the drivers. He was ex-SAS, it turned out. Brave, foolish man.

“Why is he doing this?” snarled John, unable to fathom it. Moriarty had made it clear it was Mycroft he wanted. What was the point of all this … this _theatre_ , with Sherlock?

“He’s _playing_ with us, John. Quite an ingenious little game,” he added thoughtfully.

John glared at him. “It’s not a _game_ , Sherlock.”

“It is to Jim Moriarty,” Sherlock countered icily, “And he’s winning.”

“Which pisses you off.”

“Of course it pisses me off. _He’s winning_.”

“And Mycroft can’t…”

“I don’t need Mycroft.”

Though in fact, he did. But they spoke to Mycroft only when necessary, now, and then never in person. Sherlock couldn’t ever be sure nobody else was listening inside Mycroft’s _head_. Anthea claimed otherwise, but Anthea, Sherlock knew, was emotionally compromised.

John wanted to tell Sherlock to stop playing the bloody game, then, but that was how the SAS man had died. Trying to break the pattern. Three dead, eight injured, because they couldn’t outwit the fox.

“It can’t just be to show off,” John started again, “He knows he’s got us. So what’s it for? What the hell is he trying to achieve?”

“What does the fox always want?” It wasn’t a rhetorical question; at least, not entirely. Sherlock was looking piercingly at John.

“How would I know?”

“Think, John. What does the hunter want?”

“Blood,” said John automatically, and frowned at the vampire in him answering the question. Right. So. He didn’t hunt, he didn’t need to, but if he did, he’d hunt for blood. So. What does a fox want?

“Chickens? Small game.”

“Think larger. Foxes are notorious for their cleverness. They’re fast, deceitful, cunning. Opportunistic. But this isn’t just any fox. This is the epitome of fox-ness. A fox _spirit_.”

“So… he wants to be…” John tried to picture it. “Clever, and _known_ to be clever.”

“ _Yes._ To be devious, but have the genius of it seen, applauded even. That’s what this is about, the puzzles and the Semtex vests, showing off what a genius he is. But there’s more to it. That’s distraction. The game. He wants to keep the chickens running around in a panic while he stalks his prey. He wants... Oh!” Sherlock leapt up, smacking himself in the forehead. “ _Idiot_. _We’re_ the chickens, John. Not those petty, everyday people strapped into bombs…”

“I don’t think they think of themselves as petty, Sherlock.”

“Irrelevant. The point is, they are not the point. The purpose of this exercise is to keep us from interfering in other plans. It’s the other plans I can’t see.”

“He wants Mycroft.”

“Obviously,” Sherlock snarled.

“But what does he want him _for_?”

“Power. Influence. _A pet_.” Sherlock whirled as he paced, banging the heels of his hands against his temples, “Think, think, _think_. Not the chicken. He doesn’t really want the chicken. Does he want the farmer?” He shook his head. “Analogies, John, are a vapid waste of time. It doesn’t help.”

“A fox doesn’t want a farmer,” said John, going with the vapid waste of time anyway, because it was all he had, “The fox wants the livestock … he wants the _farm_.”

“What?”

“The livestock. The chicken run and the sheep and all. He wants the lot.”

Sherlock stopped. Blinked.

“Mycroft… is… is not the farm. Another chicken. A prize rooster, perhaps.  He is… _oh_.”

“Oh what.”

“John. Brilliant. That is brilliant.”

“Cheers,” John deadpanned back at him, “I’ve always wanted to be brilliant. What did I say?”

“What is the farm, here?”

“London?”

“No, that is just a particularly large chicken coop.”

“Parliament?”

“Particularly annoying chickens.”

“The King?”

“Particularly flashy and annoying chicken.”

“England?”

“Now that,” said Sherlock, whirling with a grin of triumph, “Is a farm worth killing for, wouldn’t you say? Plenty of game in there, plenty of scope to expand his horizons…”

“The fox wants to rule the world?” John sounded sceptical.

“He wants a larger _game_ ,” Sherlock corrected him, “Because the fox is all _about_ the game. All about the _cleverness_ , and _demonstrating_ it. He wants a bigger stage.” He froze and scowled.

John raised an eyebrow at him. “You’re still pissed off he chose Mycroft for that instead of you.”

Sherlock scowled again. “Those types of games are _boring_. Statesmanship. Governance. Dull.” His lips pursed. John’s eyebrow rose a fraction more. “All right, yes, a little pissed off.”

It was a breakthrough, of sorts, but not one that helped them much in the immediate term.

Not until Mrs Hudson went to visit Mrs Turner that afternoon, and disappeared.

At around the same time that Greg Lestrade dropped into the post office to send off his signed divorce papers. The thick envelope was found in front of the pillar box. The detective inspector was nowhere to be found.

The first text Sherlock got read:

_I’ve been stealing your chickens,  
_ _Farmer Brown._

The second said: 

_Chickens are so funny,_  
 _the way they run around_  
 _when you cut their heads off.  
_ _It’ll look great on YouTube._

And the third read:

_Give me your brother and_  
 _I’ll be cock-a-hoop.  
_ _Otherwise, feathers fly._

Sherlock was furious. Then frantic. Then cold, like stone. And he planned.  And he told John what he expected him to do. They fought about it. For the first time ever, John’s fangs descended due to rage, and instead of recoiling, as a sensible human should, Sherlock grabbed John by the collar and dragged him close until they were nose to nose.

“Save it,” he hissed, “For when it’s needed. You follow your orders, John, if we’re to have any hope of succeeding. You said you _trusted me_. _I know what I’m doing!”_

John very much doubted that was true. He very much feared that Sherlock was making this all up as he went along.

He very much feared the many ways in which it could all go wrong.

But he relented. “I do. I trust you.”

“And I trust you,” said Sherlock quietly, letting go the fistful of John’s shirt, “With my life. With _theirs,_ John.”

And so the plan was made. A message sent through the homeless network. A phone call placed.

Sherlock sent a text to Jim Moriarty.

_St Bart’s. He thinks_  
 _it’s for a blood test,_  
 _a new theory.  
_ _Meet me on the roof. - SH_


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mycroft and Sherlock meet on the roof of St Bart's hospital. Of course, the Fox is there. Only, Moriarty never needed Sherlock to betray Mycroft. No. This is about something else entirely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've plotted this out and I think it'll be ten chapters in all.

The helicopter was small and light and, strictly speaking, did not have clearance to land on the rooftop of St Bartholomew’s Hospital.

It touched down, though, and the passenger alighted, ducking to move past the rotors. Then the machine was off again, like a dragonfly.

Mycroft straightened; tucked his umbrella under his arm; smoothed down his suit; ran the palms of both hands over his hair. Once more impeccable, he took the umbrella by the handle and tilted his head, listening.

“Sherlock.”

“Mycroft.” Sherlock stepped out from the shadow of the stairwell door. Mycroft closed his eyes. _What I cannot see, I cannot deduce, and therefore cannot betray_ , he thought.

Because he could sense that the Fox was listening. Part of him was joyful at the knowledge. An alien part. Something foreign in him that wanted to wag its tail, roll on its back, show its belly.

It made Mycroft shudder and grit his teeth. He deliberately bit the inside of his lip, drawing blood. He had command of the fox, yet, but not for much longer. As he stood, and listened for the Fox who was listening through his blood, he also calculated steps to the edge of the roof; time to fall. How long to fear the end before it came?

He should not have left Anthea behind. Or he should have contacted Sergeant Donovan. They had made promises, and it appeared that soon, those promises would have to be fulfilled.

Perhaps it was the fox in him that made him leave Anthea and forgo the call to Donovan. He frowned. He was not accustomed to lying to himself. He knew it was the fox. He had walked willingly into this trap because the fox had told him to. 

The thought made him feel ill.

Mycroft had never been afraid in his life, before now. He did not much like the feeling.

“Blood tests?” he said, “For a new theory? Really, Sherlock?”

“It sounded plausible.”

“I suppose it does.”

“You came anyway.”

“There seems little point in delaying the inevitable,” said Mycroft. “What did he offer you for this… betrayal? I hope you don’t mind my asking, little brother. It is simply that I cannot imagine what constitutes thirty pieces of silver for you. Or rather… oh. Yes. Not silver. A life for a life. Who has he threatened?”

“Mrs Hudson,” said Sherlock evenly, “And Greg Lestrade. He took them both, three hours ago.”

“Not John Watson?”

“It is rather difficult to threaten John in a like manner, and killing him outright would not serve Moriarty’s purpose. He wants me cooperative.”

“Of course. Dr Watson is looking for the hostages, I imagine.”

“Well, of course he is,” said a lilting voice, and the brothers turned to see a small, sleek fox pad into the sunlight. It was _smiling_.

Its mouth stretched into strange, wrong shapes as it spoke.

“John Watson, what a busy little vampire bee, saving the world. Brave little trooper, isn’t he? So _determined_. So ridiculously _human_ for an undead thing. Saving people instead of _eating_ them. A terrible failure as a vampire, but _sooooooo_ adorable. And so _tame_. Lovely pet, I imagine, Sherlock. I should get myself a live-in one. Oh, but _look_. Here’s one I prepared earlier.”

The fox rose on its hind legs, fur receding, long nose shrinking, paws spreading. Jim Moriarty stood naked on the rooftop, grinning, ember eyes more than a little mad.

“Hello Mycroft. Pet.” He wiggled his fingers in a cheery wave.

Mycroft felt the fox in him swell, and the red fur grew on the back of his hands. On his face. He whimpered and grit his teeth, and then glared, and the change halted.

“Oh, look at you,” said Moriarty, like a proud parent, “Still trying. Bless. What do you think is keeping you human now, hmm? It’s not like you have much to hold onto a human life. No-one who matters.”

“I’ve brought him,” said Sherlock, stepping between Moriarty and his brother, “Where are Mrs Hudson and Lestrade?”

Moriarty stretched his neck, frowning. His nudity did not in the slightest diminish the sense of threat from him. He did not seem at all vulnerable. More at ease, really, as though his own skin were sufficient as battle dress.

“They’re in a little out of the way place,” said Moriarty, “For now. I’m not finished with them yet.”

“You have Mycroft.”

“I’ve had Mycroft from the start,” Moriarty’s grin was unpleasant, “It’s not like I needed you to get him. In another week I could whistle for him, and he’d come running.”

Sherlock’s eyes widened and he dare not look back at Mycroft. He could already hear the change in Mycroft’s breathing. The sharpness, the shallow breaths, schooled back to evenness.

“Makes it so much easier, though, if he doesn’t have any connections left to all you boring little people. Plus, it's funny. What I have planned for you.”

“What do you want?” Sherlock said through gritted teeth.

“Oh pet,” Moriarty grinned again, “I want you to kill yourself.  Take a little step into the air. There’s a lamb.”

“Why on earth would I do that?”

“Because if you don’t, I’m going to have Lestrade and your landlady killed. Or maybe turned into werewolves. Though your dear Mrs Hudson might make a vicious little vampire given half a chance. She survived that drug-dealing, butchering husband of hers, didn’t she? Give her some fangs and a blood lust and who knows _what_ she might achieve.”

Sherlock wasn’t sure he was still breathing. He had to make an effort to inhale. He'd already gathered, far too late, who the man covered in ashes and The woman covered in blue flowers were. _Red garlands at their throats. Damned precognitive dreams. Why did they only make sense after the fact?_

Finally, Sherlock turned to look at Mycroft. Mycroft stared back, unblinking.

“Time’s a-wasting, Sherlock,” sing-songed Moriarty, turning back, “You’ve got five minutes.”

Sherlock’s head snapped up. “And how will your thugs know? You haven’t a phone. You can’t signal them.”

“You think I only have one leashed fox in my pack, do you? What I know, John Clay knows, if I choose it.”

Sherlock swallowed. He turned to Mycroft.

Mycroft smiled wearily. “I’m sure you can make the calculation, Sherlock. I am lost regardless, it seems. You cannot save me now. Save yourself, instead.”

“And let Mrs Hudson and Lestrade die.”

“Yes. Why not? Caring is not an advantage, Sherlock. All things end.”

Sherlock swallowed again. “Yes. It seems they do." 

They stared at each other a little longer, reading things unsaid. Fear. Sorrow. Regret.

“I am truly very sorry for your loss, Sherlock,” said Mycroft, hands steady on the handle of his umbrella, and he meant it. But there were worse things, more dangerous things, than death.

“I don’t know what you…” began Sherlock, although he did.

In that moment, Moriarty read the fox inside Mycroft, and he knew too, just as a click separated the handle from the shaft of Mycroft’s umbrella, and Mycroft raised the narrow barrel of the concealed small calibre gun to his own throat and pulled the trigger.


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One brother is bleeding to death. The other's about to take a fall.

Mycroft began to pull the trigger.

“ ** _Mycroft!_** ” Sherlock shouted, his lunge towards his brother aborted at the sharp crack of gunfire.

Moriarty emitted a sharp, high chittering scream of outrage and he reached out to the fox inside Mycroft and _pushed_.

Mycroft’s hands jerked and when he pulled the trigger, instead of taking out his own throat and brain, he sent the bullet a fraction lower, into his neck, just above the clavicle. The bone shattered and blood sprayed out – over his face, over Sherlock’s, over his hands and Sherlock’s chest.

And then Mycroft folded, sinking first to his knees, then to his back as his legs sprawled. He panted for breath through the pain. _I’ve failed. I have failed. I failed. Oh god._

He tried to look at Sherlock, tried to find a way to ask his brother to finish this for him, but there was Sherlock, eyes wide, skin as waxy pale as skim milk, the pace of his wild heartbeat evident in the pulse at his neck, in his temple. Sherlock’s face and chest were spattered with blood. It looked like Sherlock was the one bleeding to death.

Mycroft could not even comfort himself with the knowledge that this was not true, because Moriarty’s cruel game wasn’t over yet. The people his brother had chosen as his family were at risk, and Mycroft could not be sure Sherlock would let them die. Part of him hoped he wouldn’t. A larger part of him did not want to lose Sherlock, too.

“I’m…” _sorry_ he tried to say, but it hurt. He could feel the blood leaving his body. He blinked. By his calculations, although he had not died instantly, surely the blood loss would be sufficient. Surely he would die soon…

“Not quite yet, Mycroft, pet,” snarled Moriarty, “I don’t appreciate you trying to cheat me, after all the work I’ve done.” Moriarty’s hand was extended towards Mycroft’s chest. “Give me a minute and you’ll be… well, fine is putting it a bit grandly. But my spirit in you will keep you alive long enough to work a little animal magic, I think. This is far from over.” Then Moriarty grinned that manic grin again. “You sneaky bastard, Mycroft Holmes. I knew you’d be a fine recruit. Comes naturally to you. We just have to tidy up that one last detail of having an inconvenient baby brother to _care_ about.”

His head whipped suddenly to one side, the force of his gaze halting Sherlock in his tracks as he reached for the dropped gun. “I wouldn’t,” he said darkly, “I really wouldn’t.”

Sherlock closed his hands into fists, and didn’t.

“See, I’ve still got all the cards. I can save your brother. I can save your little playmates. If you die. So. Off you pop.”

Mycroft panted with the effort of trying to die when that alien in his body wouldn’t let him go. “And what…” he managed to say, wondering if revealing to Sherlock the answer to this question might change anything at all, “…are your… plans… for John… Watson?”

“Oh, him,” Moriarty waved a dismissive hand, “He’s doing his part quite well.” He grinned again at Sherlock. “Oh, look at your sad, confused little face. I should take a photo. I would if I had my phone. Don’t be like that. John’s got one job, and he’s being terrific at it. But I don’t want you to suffer over much. That being John’s job he’s so terrific at. He suffers. So well. So my gift to him is to suffer some more. His job is to fail to save you. He can spend his self-flagellating eternity without his little human buddy.  He’ll move on, though. They do you know. Faithless bastards, vampires. You’ll see.” That vicious grin again. “Oh no, that’s right. You won’t. Ta-ra, then.”

Moriarty waved, then flicked his hands impatiently towards the edge of the roof.

Sherlock couldn’t make himself look at Mycroft. And then he had to.

Their eyes met, and all they found was despair. Mycroft closed his eyes. Sherlock turned away.

“You really are being terribly tediously slow, Sherlock.” Moriarty’s expression was now a sullen scowl. “Truly. Off with you, now. I have things to be getting on with.”

Slowly, Sherlock walked to the edge of the hospital roof. Slowly, one reluctant step at a time, he placed his feet on the raised edge.

He looked down into the square.

An ambulance was parked there. A laundry truck. A few other vehicles. A cyclist, a few random people. Mostly empty.

He wanted to call John, but what was the point. To say goodbye? To say he was sorry? To wish things were different?

John would know all of those things anyway. He would know how much he'd meant, and how sorry Sherlock was to leave him.

Sherlock Holmes thought three things as he stood there, looking down.

He did not want to die, but he absolutely could not let Mycroft, Greg or Mrs Hudson die.

Where the hell was Sally Donovan?

And where the _fucking_ hell was John?

 


	4. Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mycroft is bleeding out on the roof of St Bart's, and Sherlock stands on the precipice, about to be forced to jump.
> 
> Meanwhile, in an old building on the border between Lambeth and Soutwark, Sally and John have tracked down the kidnapped Greg and Mrs Hudson. Their job is to free the hostages without getting themselves killed by the vampires, werewolf and fox-spirit minion set to guard them.
> 
> And if that's not bad enough, what's this new figure Sally Donovan dreams of? The one with the wings and the burning light and the sword.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tend not to write on weekends, so you may not get any more of this until Monday. Sorry.

Sally Donovan wished, more than anything, that Anthea was by her side right now. Mycroft Holmes’s bodyguard was smart, cool-headed, funny. A crack shot. Sally wasn’t a bad shot herself, considering, but even in her line of work, she wasn’t much called on to discharge a firearm. This was _London_ , not America.

Actually, what Sally Donovan wished more than anything was that none of this was happening. Not the vampires and fox spirits, not the precognitive dreams, definitely not the kidnappings. But all the wishing in the world couldn’t make it not true – well, she assumed it couldn’t; maybe in this bizarre world she’d come to inhabit it was possible to wish all of this away, and she might live some semi-normal life.

She was a realist, though, for all that she was a precognitive dreamer. Wishing Anthea was here to have her back and go over the changes in their dreams was a waste of time.

Sally knew perfectly well how both her and Anthea’s dreams had changed. Anthea’s precog powers were a fraction of Sally’s, but she still saw it. The raven that Sherlock threw from the rooftop, that fell and broke and turned into the body that dead John Watson mourned. And she dreamed something new now. A second raven, the black feathers of it gilded with an auburn sheen and a pool of blood. Anthea had smiled ruefully as she’d described it. “Like the Tower Ravens,” she said, “Once they’re gone, England will fall.”

It seemed fairly clear now who both ravens were. Sherlock had sent her the message, and she in turn had alerted Anthea through their new, secret phones, used only to contact each other. If Mycroft had discovered this ploy to keep him out of the loop, he hadn’t said anything. It was all about his protection, anyway, and the protection of the Crown if the former failed.

Sally didn’t dream of the auburn-gilded raven. She saw the man covered in ashes clearly these days, her DI, and the garland of roses at his throat was more blood red and less like roses every time she dreamed. The woman draped in flowers had taken her longer to identify, until Anthea had shown her the surveillance photographs of Mrs Hudson going on a date with that shopkeeper in a new dress. Little blue forget-me-nots on a cream background. Summery and pretty, a little young for the woman wearing it maybe, but she’d had a lovely smile.

The new thing in her dream was the angel. Wings and white light and shining sword, too fiercely bright to make out a face or limbs or anything but the towering, righteous rage. Sally couldn’t tell if it was on the roof or on the ground or in the air or over water. She couldn’t see a face. She didn’t know what kind of omen it was, only that it was an almighty creature, of awe and flame, and unstoppable. She hadn’t the first idea what it meant. She was terrified to contemplate it

Sally pressed her back to the brickwork and checked the phone again. A new CCTV image capture, sent by Anthea, showed the truck they were following. DI Lestrade had not been missing fifteen minutes when she got the alert. Well, Anthea had set up surveillance on the pair of them, once she and Sally had identified them. It wasn’t clear what part they’d play in Moriarty’s foul game, but you didn’t have to be Sherlock Bloody Holmes to know it wouldn’t be good for them.

Holmes had been right, though, to say they would have to let anything short of actual on-the-spot murder happen to them both, though, or risk letting Mycroft, and therefore Moriarty, know that they were, if not a step ahead, then not too many steps behind. It grated on Sally, badly, but there was nothing for it. Bigger things were at stake.

Darting down alleys, taking shortcuts, one right through a busy pub, Sally finally emerged on a tiny cross-street. She could see the truck backing up to an old shopfront. Squinting at the faded gold lettering on the cracked and partly boarded window, Sally could see that it had once been a florist. ‘Rose In Bloom. Wreaths and Wedding Garlands a Specialty’ it said.

_Rose garlands._

It would be nice to believe that was it, but Sally couldn’t get the image of the garlands turning into blooms of blood from her mind. Best not to be complacent.

The van stopped, the driver got out and flung open the back doors. Three other men came out from the former florists and helped him to carry a roll of carpet from the back of the van into the building.

Sally pulled out her phone and sent three rapid texts.

The carpet roll wriggled. One of the men punched the middle of the roll and it was still.

A snarl at her ear made her jump, though she managed to swallow down the tiny shriek.

“Sorry.” John Watson didn’t sound sorry.

“Do you have to be so fucking stealthy?” she hissed at him.

He grinned at her, vampire teeth glinting ferally in the light. She couldn’t quite suppress a shudder and suddenly he was all contrition, closing his mouth over the fangs, frowning.

“Why did it take so long for them to get here?” he asked, more for something to break the uneasy silence than because he needed to know.

“Greg put up a fight,” Sally said, “I think he took one of their guys out in the back of the van – there was certainly a huge bloody row in the back of that thing when they got to Lambeth Bridge. We thought we might have to step in. It went quiet for a bit after that. Looks like he just woke up again.” Her scowl deepened. “If he’s not all right, they’re going to pay.”

“They’ll pay,” said John, “Don’t you worry about that.”

“Mrs Hudson?”

“She managed to use the asthma inhaler just like Sherlock taught her to.”

Mrs Hudson was aware that some of her tenant’s visitors were a little dangerous – she’d already had an unpleasant encounter, although Sherlock and John had taken care of _that_ little situation.  More recently, Sherlock had taught her how to lay a trail, and she hadn’t asked why he didn’t teach her self defence instead. She knew as well as Sherlock did that an old lady wouldn’t stand a chance in a fight. But laying a trail of subtle chemicals dispensed from a doctored asthma atomiser was perfectly doable. As long as nobody tried to make her actually inhale the stuff, but it wasn’t poisonous, and the scent of it was just strong enough for a vampire with powerful, supernatural olfactory senses to follow.

Not that she knew that John was a vampire; but she had faith in Sherlock, and did as he asked.

John had picked up the scent from the Baker Street, where their landlady had managed to spray it about a bit, including on the tyres of the car. She was smart, their Mrs Hudson.

“Is she all right?”

“They weren’t as rough as they might have been.” But John’s expression was cold fury, and Sally decided she wasn’t going to think about that. She remembered that obnoxious American from months ago, who’d so clumsily fallen from a window in Baker Street. Six times.

“Are you all…” Sally gestured vaguely, reluctant to put it into words, “Fired up?”

John’s brow creased then cleared. “Yes, I’ve… eaten,” he said, “If that’s what you mean. Sherlock gave me…”

“Don’t.” She took a breath. “Let’s just… get Greg and Mrs Hudson out of there. Where can we get in?”

Sally was not terribly fond of the next part, where she clung to John Watson’s back and he climbed, fly-like, up the outside wall to the sloped rooftop of the second storey. She climbed quietly down and drew her gun. John reached into his jacket and withdrew not a gun but a short wooden stake.

“Oh,” said Sally. “So. Of course. Vampires. Is this…” she lifted the gun, “Is this even any use?”

“Aim for the heart or the head,” said John grimly, “That’s very effective on pretty much everything.”

With infinite care, he crept to a skylight and with his fingernails undid the screws. He paused to listen regularly but no-one came up to disturb them. Still moving slowly, he removed a pane and put it aside. He tucked the stake back into his belt and gestured. She holstered her gun and let him take her hands.

He lowered her easily into the attic with that strength that had impressed her so much the day they’d found him hanging by the feet in 221B. She waited for him to follow her down, hanging by his fingertips first, then landing light as ash next to her.

Stake out once more, and Sally’s gun drawn, they opened the access hatch a fraction. John listened. Sniffed deeply. Noiselessly lowered the hatch.

John held up four fingers and a thumb. _Five of them_. He hooked two fingers in front of his mouth and held up three fingers. _Three vampires._ Identified by their scent, she supposed. He held up one finger and made a ridiculous growly  monster face. She arched an eyebrow. He shrugged, then mimed howling at the moon. _Okay. So. Werewolf. One thereof._

She held up her hand indicating ‘five’ and gave him a questioning look. He mouthed ‘fox’ at her.

Right. All supernatural then. Not exactly carte blanche for killing, but this was definitely going to be a fight for her life. Worse, she had to be careful not to be scratched by the fox or the werewolf, and that was going to be a handicap.

Slowly, John eased the hatch aside and peered down into the dimly lit interior.

And the suddenly, so fast she hardly saw him move, though she felt the breeze of his lightning motion on her face, John struck downward, pulled upward, his right arm wrapped around the throat of a fang-faced man who was trying to snarl and couldn’t make a sound because of the hand crushing his larynx, and John’s left hand slammed the stake into the vampire’s chest and then it was just dust, dust, dust, sprinkling to the floor and John Watson, scowling,  adjusting his grip on the stake.

He looked into her startled face, blinked and pointedly held up four fingers.

She nodded. Right. This was war, after all. This was saving the Tower Ravens. This was saving not just London or England or Great Britain. This was, very possibly, saving the world.

John checked again and then took Sally’s hands and lowered her to the floor below. He followed soon after and they tip-toed to the stairs.

“Jabez?” someone shouted up the stairs, “Get the fuck back down here. That copper’s getting twitchy again. You said you wanted a bite next time.”

When there was no reply, the another voice said: “If you don’t want a go, I will. I want to take a photo of his little face when he sees the teeth. That’s always hilarious, when they see the teeth.”

John thumped his hand into the wall once, then twice, and then he did a really creepy thing. In the low light, he jumped up to take hold of the light fitting and brace his feet high against the wall. It looked like he was suspended on the ceiling, though Sally could see how he was using the ugly lightshade, a nearby door frame and the wall that met this one at right-angles.  John’s body was mostly concealed in the dark, although he would be visible to anyone who reached the top of the landing.

A light-haired man came warily up the stairs. He paused and wrinkled his nose. “You got someone up there with you Jabez?”

John nodded at Sally and when she looked a bit confused he pulled strange emphatic faces at her.

“Jabez, have you been bringing snacks home?” The blond took another step. “Because I’ve fucking told you about not sharing, you dick.”

John kicked a heel against the wall this time and glared at her. Sally took a guess and made a little shriek of fright. Tell the truth, she didn’t have to fake it all that much.

“Bloody knew it,” grumped the blond, “Leave some for me you little shit.”

Sally made a little cut off scream, which she thought was a nice touch. It certainly brought the blond into view, and he hardly had time to register her standing there with her gun drawn when a compact body swung across using the light fitting as a fulcrum and wrapped legs tight around his neck before twisting and throwing the blond man onto the carpet.

John sat on top of the vampire, knees pushed into his throat, but John was in no position to stake his heart from there. Instead, John plunged the stake through the vampire’s right eye before, almost too fast to see, he half rose while yanking the stake out again and then plunged it into the vampire’s chest.

More dust, settling quietly.

John stood up, brushed down his jacket and gave her a challenging look.

Sally held up three fingers and nodded.

The third one they met was the werewolf (John could tell by the scent), a muscular man, at this time of the month looking like nothing more than a scarred costermonger. He took one look at the dust grimed vampire in the foyer, and the woman next to him pointing a gun at his head, and he swallowed. He pointed towards the kitchen and held up two fingers. Then he put his hands together in a praying gestured as he backed towards the front door.

Sally raised the gun a little higher, and he stopped.

John stepped behind her, not interfering with her sights, and sidled up to the kitchen door. He frowned fiercely and scowled at the werewolf. “Call her,” he mouthed.

The werewolf shook his head.

Sally raised the gun and slowly pulled back the hammer.

“Spaulding!” yipped the werewolf, “What do you think is taking Jabez and Archie so long up there?”

“Don’t know, don’t care,” said the concealed Spaulding, “And what’s that I smell out there? Do I smell gun oil, you idiot? The boss told you no guns. And that’s… those morons. No guns, no girls. Don’t you idiots ever listen?”

And then she was there, a petite thing with dark hair and darker eyes and a vicious grin as she came out low and fast and flew at John Watson with deadly intent.

John leapt, twisted, grunted with the pain as something aimed at his chest slammed instead into his leg and he landed badly, clutching at the silver blade protruding from his thigh.

Spaulding didn’t give him an inch, falling on him instead with mouth open and biting as she grasped for the hilt of the knife again. John punched up into her chest, over her heart, and that made her pause ever so briefly, wondering if he’d staked her after all, but he’d dropped the sharpened wooden spike and he was only bluffing now. Spaulding jabbed at his throat with her fingernails, splitting the skin as he struggled to get away.

Gunfire – a single shot – a door slamming – Donovan shouting _stop_! – Spaulding’s head turned aside to snarl, giving John a space to struggle and shove and then….

Dust. Raining down. And Sally Donovan, chest heaving, holding on the stake and staring at him through the haze in the weirdest combination of horror and triumph.

“Werewolf did a runner,” she said.

“You all right?” John wrapped a hand around the silver knife in his leg and tugged it out with a hiss. He rose unsteadily and threw the knife away, shaking his fingers to cool the mild burn that had begun. The deep scores in his skin from the vampire’s fingernails were already healing, “He didn’t scratch or bite you?”

“Nope. He just... bolted.”

John nodded and put his hand out for the stake. She gave it to him and together they entered the kitchen.

Mrs Hudson was sitting, blindfolded and gagged, at the table. Beside her was Greg Lestrade, unconscious, bound to the chair and bleeding from wounds in his hands, his mouth and forehead. He had an unhealthy pallor to him and his breathing rasped.

Between them sat a man with dark red hair and a very pointed nose and face. His eyes were ember dark.

“You’re earlier than we expected,” he said, “But you’re still too late.”

John stepped towards him and Sally raised the gun.

“John Clay,” he said, “At your service.” His gave them a pointed grin with is foxy face.

“Too late for what? What have you done to them?”

Clay laughed. “Nothing to them. A little sleeping draught for her. A nasty knock on the head for him. Sorry about that, he did insist on putting up a fight. No, these two are fine. They weren’t the point. You can have them.” He rose to his feet and spread his hands wide. “You know they’re safe, but how will your poncy detective know that? He hasn’t long now, before he has to walk the plank.” Clay giggled. “Jim says that Mycroft thinks about Sherlock Holmes as a pirate sometimes. All tricorn hats and big coats and swash and buckle. He says it’s the cutest thing.”

“And what happens,” snarled John, limping up to the man and pressing the stake to Clay’s throat, “If I kill you.”

Clay the fox-man blinked and tilted his head to one side, as though listening. “He says… _que sera sera. But Sherlock still won’t **know** they’re safe, and then there’s brother Mycroft to consider, so he still has to jump_. _Gotcha_.”

Then Clay shook his head and frowned.

“Jim Moriarty is happy to let you die,” said Sally.

In the distance, sirens were calling, getting louder.

“I surrender,” he said, then smiled, “It’s not going to make a difference to Holmes now, is it? Like the boss says. He won’t find out they’re safe before it’s time to jump.”

John grabbed the fox-man by the throat and pushed him across the room with a growl. Clay crashed into the wall with a yelp but then lay on the floor panting and laughing.

Swiftly, John checked Mrs Hudson first, dropping a gentle kiss on her forehead as she stirred, and then Lestrade. Sally, gun trained on Clay, watched as John dribbled a generous amount of spit into his palm and smoothed it against Greg’s head wound. Greg moaned but his breathing became less laboured and some colour seemed to come back to his skin.

After a moment inspecting the blood on his palm – Sally had the awful notion he was about to lick it up – john limped to the sink instead to wash his hand and then, tearing a larger hole in his jeans, to flush the swollen knife wound.

“I have to go,” he said, “Sherlock needs me.”

“Go,” said Sally, “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

John stepped out the front door as the sirens turned into the street, responding to the text Sally had sent. Despite the limp, he was gone before the arriving police could see him.

Sally picked Clay up by the collar and pushed him out the door. Her colleagues raised weapons, then lowered them again as they saw who it was. “Just this one,” she said to Dimmock as he strode up to her, “He’s alone. The DI and Holmes’s landlady are in the kitchen. Call an ambulance.” She shoved Clay into the constable’s hands. “Cuff him.”

Several minutes were spent on untying the hostages and getting a rapid debrief, from which Sally had to omit very nearly everything. She’d seen the van pull up, she said, and saw the carpet removed. It made her suspicious, but when she came in, this is what she found. No, she didn’t know where the other people had gone. Yes, it was a lucky break.

Yes, this was a hellaciously dusty house.

Clay didn’t contradict a word, only grinned at her.

Five minutes after John had left, Sally couldn’t stand it anymore. “I have to go, sir,” she said to DI Dimmock, who had arrived with the other cars, “Family emergency.” Well, she didn’t have to say _whose_ family, did she? 

Dimmock started an angry protest, but she was already gone. She commandeered a squad car and took off. She flicked the siren on and drove hell-for-leather to the hospital. She didn’t know what she was going to do there. She was afraid of what she was going to see.

The angel, perhaps. _Wings.Blinding light. Flaming sword_. Vengeance or justice or some other weird monster coming up from the guts of London to screw up her life.

Whatever it was, she had to know.

And whichever that falling raven was, she had to know that too.

_Walk the plank. Time to jump._

_John was right,_ she thought, _it’s Sherlock_.

And it made her sick to know it.

*

John’s leg hurt, but that meant less than nothing right now. If things had gone to plan, Sherlock would know Mrs Hudson and Greg were safe, but that reference to Mycroft wasn’t what he’d expected.

Things were going wrong. He could feel it. He wished he’d had time to clean his wound better – the silver in his flesh wasn’t as bad as if there’d been garlic as well, but it wasn’t great. His thigh burned with pain, with the effort of running so fast across Southwark, towards St Bart’s. Incrementally it hurt less, but he hadn’t the time to stop, he hadn’t the time to waste. The seconds he’d stopped to spare a smear of saliva for Greg’s cracked skull might cost him everything else that mattered.

John Watson had not prayed in a very long time. But he prayed now, as he ran through London, leaping across traffic, taking short cuts through or over buildings and across parks, nothing but a blur, an eddy of solid matter, towards the hospital.

_Please. Please. Please. Don’t let me be too late. Please. Give me this miracle. Please._

 


	5. Chapter Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The hostages have been rescued, but Mycroft is bleeding to death, and that was never part of the plan. Anthea is in position, the team is on their way up, John is racing towards St Bart's and Sherlock has to decide. Will he let Mycroft die? And if the answer is no, and Sherlock steps off the roof - how can John possibly save him?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I found time to write this weekend after all.
> 
> I don't think it helps much with the suspense though.

Anthea pressed close to the window on the top floor of St Bart’s hospital and tried to see if the message had been received and the protocol implemented. Sally’s text – hostages located; getting our chickens out now – had been welcome, but this was far from over.

For a start, there was the gunshot she’d heard from the rooftop. Small calibre, but distinctive. It sounded like the boss’s other umbrella, the one with the gun concealed in it. That was not good. Not good at all.

She’d had to keep so much from him, and he knew she was doing that, for his safety as well as the nation’s. He’d all but begged her to do that, ordering an auto-update of all his most vital codes and then, instead of opening the list of encrypted alpha-numeric strings, ‘dropping’ the envelope at her desk. She wasn’t supposed to have those codes, but better her than the Fox.

Whatever that gunshot meant, it seemed that the plan was going to hell. Was she going to have to kill Mr Holmes after all? Shoot her Mycroft through the head to spare him something worse? After she’d worked so hard to save him?

If she must, then she would. It was her promise to him, and she would keep her word, if she could do nothing else. She would save his soul if she couldn’t save his life.

Anthea smirked at herself then. She was not a romantic at heart, she would have said, and yet here she was, choosing to save souls, now. Even supposing Mycroft Holmes _had_ one, or a heart even. But a life, certainly, he had that, and it had become precious to her.

Fine then.

She pressed her forehead to the window once more and gazed down into the square.

And there, yes. The man with the bags on the bench seat; one of Holmes Minor’s homeless network, good fellow, who had got the message as well. In the top of one bag he’d curled a scarf into a dark 2 against a white background. In the other, another scarf curled a 9.

Anthea sent the text to the crew waiting below.

_Two. Nine. Both prisoners freed. Send Mycroft’s people on their way._

Sherlock would certainly see that, if he stood close enough to the edge, which is what they had surmised would happen. Moriarty certainly meant to do away with the younger Holmes, and they’d decided weeks ago that St Bart’s gave them the best opportunity to set something up that might work, might give them time to find the man in ashes and the woman in flowers that Sally dreamed of.

If only Anthea knew what the gunshot meant. Nothing good, certainly.

She walked to the stairwell and, gun drawn, quietly made her way towards the roof.

*

The deep breathing techniques he’d learned as a child were not as effective as Sherlock would have liked. He’d never had to practise them while standing on the edge of a rooftop, waiting to step into oblivion while his brother bled to death behind him and a deranged fox spirit conspired to rule the world.

Sherlock’s lips curled into a self-directed snarl of contempt. Allowing sentiment to cloud his thinking would kill them all as surely as panic. They had planned this carefully, allowing for numerous parameter shifts, and…

“Bored now,” came the hated singsong voice behind him, and Sherlock looked over his shoulder at Moriarty. The fox’s face was sullen; petulant; impatient.

At his feet, Mycroft lay panting. The fingers of his right hand were straining towards the dropped pistol, still trying desperately to reach the only salvation available to him. Blood had stopped welling out of the wound in his neck, but that seemed to be only because Moriarty stood over him, a hand extended in his direction, willing Mycroft’s body to obey the commands of the invading spirit.

Moriarty saw him looking, and his wicked grin returned.

“I see you looking, _little brother Sherlock_ ,” he said, “And no, there really isn’t any other way. Jump and I’ll save him, and I’ll call Clay off your playmates. Easy peasey.”

Sherlock looked out into the square one last time. And…

There. Below. The signal at long last. The bag on the right showing 2. Lestrade and Mrs Hudson were safe. Sally had fulfilled her role, alerting the homeless network to her location, where the hostages were held. One of the network would have positioned themselves nearby, seen the mission successfully concluded in the last few minutes and texted this message on.

On the right, the signal that Anthea should start the next phase. Mycroft’s people were on the way up. Anthea was on the floor below and would surely be here in a moment.

And do what? Idiot Mycroft had messed up so much careful work by trying to be _noble_. That task – the killing of Mycroft Holmes if no other avenue was left – had rightly been allocated to Anthea; and Mycroft’s overdeveloped sense of responsibility had ruined it. Ruined it all.

 _Maybe,_ Sherlock thought, _I should let Mycroft die. He wouldn’t want to be Moriarty’s slave, and betray everything he spent his life protecting._

He heard Mycroft’s quiet groan of despair, quickly crushed by his brother’s iron will, and Sherlock knew suddenly that he didn’t want to let Mycroft die. He didn’t want to lose him. He didn’t…

And there, in the square, at last, there, movement, the uneven blur of John arriving at last – _uneven? Injured. Still fast. He sees me. **He’s here.**_

“No more wasting time,” snarled Moriarty, “Jump now, or I’ll kill your brother with my bare teeth.”

 _He knows Clay is defeated_ , Sherlock thought. _He doesn’t know I know. But there is still Mycroft…_

“And don’t think your precious John will save you,” Moriarty’s voice continued to sneer, “Even if he’s found the other two, he won’t get here on time. And if he does, what is he going to do? _Catch_ you? From this height? No. He’s going to watch you _fall_.”

Sherlock looked down and saw John looking up. He could not see, but could certainly envisage, the fear on John’s face.

It was time for a leap of faith. _John will save me, one way or another. John will save me and together we will save Mycroft, because we still have Anthea. We are not yet out of options._

Panic was not going to be the death of him. Sentiment might, though.

With a smile, Sherlock spread his arms wide. His dark coat flapped around him, caught by the wind. This was a greater height than the one from which Mycroft fell - from which John saved Mycroft - at the Halloween Ball. It really might not work this time. Sherlock had a moment to consider the odds of his surviving an impact long enough for John to turn him, then dismissed it.

Sherlock stepped into the void.

He angled to fall parallel to the ground, the smallest attempt to slow the rate of descent, to spread the area of impact if it came to that, to minimise the damage to his head as he collided with the earth. He had a fleeting second _of I hope John knows to finish me if I am brain damaged beyond salvation_ before suddenly, and much too soon, the air was slammed out of his lungs.

*

John saw Sherlock step off the roof and found reserves of speed he had no idea could exist even in this strangely strong dead body of his. He moved so fast that everything around him was in slow motion.

_Sherlock stepping into nothing._

Run, across the bitumen, up onto the bonnet and roof of an inconvenient taxi.

_Sherlock, arms flailing, coat billowing._

Leap down, to the road, arm knocking a cyclist sideways onto the footpath.

 _The broken raven, falling_.

Run, run, run, over over over the paths and the road, past an onlooker, around a nurse, over over, so fast, so fast.

_Sherlock, silently falling, mouth open in a shocked **oh**._

One step onto the bonnet of the laundry truck, next from its roof, a third leap into space, up up up up, arms outstretched to catch him. To save the one important thing. _The only thing._ To keep him safe - Sherlock, the breath his body no longer breathed; Sherlock, the heart his body no longer beat. Sherlock, his very soul.

John’s body crashed into Sherlock’s, his shoulder driving into Sherlock’s stomach at this awkward angle, his arms clutching wildly to Sherlock’s torso.

He grasped, twisted, trying to put his own body between Sherlock’s and the unforgiving ground.

John’s back slammed into the roof of the laundry truck and the metal recoiled, sending them both flying off again.

John twisted again, landing more on his side this time, but his grip still held Sherlock up, away, up, _safe safe safe oh please safe. **Please.**_

Carefully, John tilted to deposit Sherlock gently on the ground. John thought he might have done the near impossible and broken a bone inside himself. But no, as he rolled to his knees to check Sherlock, everything worked. It ached – almost a novelty these days – but it all worked.

“Sherlock!”

Sherlock stared up at him, pale eyes wide with shock, blood smeared over his face.

Not breathing.

_Not breathing._

 


	6. Chapter Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sally arrives at St Bart's and sees her dream become real. The raven falling, the body that Sherlock Holmes threw from the rooftop, and John Watson, dead man, with an expression like the world just ended.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Frankly, I couldn't stand the tension any longer myself. I made some extra time so I could give you - Sally's Dream, in the flesh. As it were.

Sally stamped on the brake and the squad car slewed to a halt across two spaces. She stumbled out of the car into the square in front of St Bart’s.

She saw the uncanny blur darting across the bitumen, dodging people, sending a cyclist over, and all these bystanders looked so confused at the odd sensation of a strong wind, something solid in the empty space.

But Sally knew who that blur was, that grey shape in the air running, leaping onto the truck parked by the hospital, launching itself up into the air towards that plummeting black bird.

Not a bird.

_Sherlock._

Sally began to run towards the footpath in front of St Bart’s, terrified at what she would find, but compelled to move.

*

John rolled carefully, cradling Sherlock’s head to lay him on the ground. He assessed the damage to himself as negligible, feeling the ache as he moved, and dismissed it in less than an instant. All of his attention was for Sherlock’s needs.

Sherlock. Face covered in blood. Not breathing.

John bit back the keening that wanted to rise in his throat, instead falling into old army habits.

Triage.

No major head injury. The blood wasn’t Sherlock’s. It smelled of fox. Mycroft’s, probably. If it was Moriarty’s, Sherlock would have had no reason to jump.

Sherlock’s eyes were darting, searching John’s face. His expression was distressed but he was focused. His pulse was strong – John could hear that without needing to take it – so the problem was…

 _Ah_. The catch had been awkward, John’s body slamming into Sherlock’s diaphragm. John pushed the coat open, tore the shirt beneath it asunder. The red mark on Sherlock’s body would bruise spectacularly but, running his hand over the injury, John could detect no swelling or heat. Nothing to indicate a serious internal injury.

Winded then. The diaphragm was spasming.

John pressed gently into the muscle and leaned over Sherlock.

“I need to give you a breath,” he said, before closing his mouth over Sherlock’s and puffing a lungful of air directly into him.

Sherlock coughed, then heaved in a laboured breath. Then another, sucking in the air with a desperate hiss. A third, and then he started laughing.

“Sherlock?”

“Knew you’d do it,” said Sherlock, a little wheezily but perfectly audible. Perfectly fine.

Then he woofed air out again as John pulled him up into his arms and hugged him. And hugged him. And hugged him. And hugged him. And hugged him.

Sherlock wrapped his arms around John, curled one arm up to run fingers through John’s hair. He didn’t say anything for a while, just held and patted John’s back, his head.

“You did it,” he whispered.

“I’ve never run so fast,” John said, his voice filled with wonder and horror, “Never. I didn’t know I could.”

“Did you time it?”

That made John laugh at last. It broke the awful tension and he pulled back, grinning. “No, you pillock, I didn’t pause to get my fucking stop watch so I could keep speed records for you.”

“Pity,” said Sherlock, attempting to look serious, “Think it through next time.”

“Idiot.” John grinned.

“I suppose we can do trials later. Right now – busy busy, things to do. Help me up.”

John rose and held out his hand. Sherlock grasped it and John pulled him to his feet. Sherlock wobbled slightly then steadied.

“Mycroft?” John asked, becoming serious again.

“We’d better hurry,” said Sherlock, and – ignoring the crowd of puzzled onlookers – together they ran into the hospital.

*

Sally saw her dream become real. Sherlock falling like a broken bird. But she’d never seen John like this in her dream, all speed and grace – well, until he fell onto the truck and was thrown to the ground. Something of a dark angel, in his way, though, concentrated power and speed and intent.

Then Sherlock on the pavement, the man in black, covered in blood, and _oh god,_ John’s face – the devastation in it. Sherlock had thrown the raven from the roof, and Sherlock was dead, and it was Sherlock’s doing and John Watson, a man already dead, looked like he had seen the worst thing. The very worst thing this terrible world had to offer.

But no. No, because then he was tearing open Sherlock’s shirt and kissing… no, not kissing. _CPR_. And Sherlock coughed and breathed and then the two of them clung to each other, as though each man was the other’s greatest gift from the world. Not nightmare and perdition after all, but life, and joy.

It was almost more painful to see than the loss, but it was a better pain.

But this wasn’t over yet. Sally looked down at the text she had just received.

_Mycroft compromised.  
_ _Need your backup. - A_

Sally left Sherlock and John to their miracle and ran into St Bart’s. She took the lift to the highest floor and then ran down the corridor to the stairs that led to the roof.

She drew her gun, and began the ascent.


	7. Chapter Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the rooftop of St Bart's Hospital, Mycroft Holmes is bleeding to death. His body will survive if Moriarty so chooses, but he'll lose his soul in the process. Anthea has her gun aimed at her boss's head, prepared to save him in the only way that's left to her. And Sally Donovan? She's having waking dreams about her world coming to an end. Death and dust and destruction, if Moriarty succeeds here on the roof.

Moriarty grinned at Mycroft Holmes and giggled.

“Did you hear the thump? I heard the thump. It was less wet than imagined it would be. I suppose I should go take a peek.” He stepped away and Mycroft gasped as the blood began welling from his neck wound again. “Oh but, oops!” Moriarty took a swooping, balletic step back and held his palm towards Mycroft.

The bleeding slowed again. Mycroft groaned, less in pain than in despair.

“Aww, poor little cub,” said Moriarty, “I forgot. If I walk away from you, you bleed to death. And I did promise your baby brother to let you live so long as he went splat.”

The look Mycroft gave him was pure poison, pure cold hate.

“Not going to say anything clichéd and hilarious?” Moriarty teased, “Not ‘go to hell’ or ‘fuck you’ or even ‘whhhyyyyyyyy?’” He drew the last out like he was imitating a film, shaking his fist at the sky. Then he laughed again. “I guess not. I imagine you know why. You’re going to be such a lovely cub. They’ve taken John Clay, but I don’t need him any more. Not now I have you.”

Moriarty crouched and leaned over to brush his fingers over the wound. “I can keep you alive, you know. Give you more of the fox. You’ll heal up in no time.”

Mycroft tried to move away; he managed to shove his feet against the concrete and put an extra half inch between them. It cost him pain and blood.

“Oh, My – I can call you My, can’t I? Seems appropriate, since you are, in fact, mine now. My, stop fighting it. I appreciate your strength. I do. I’ve never had anyone fight me so hard with just their brain before. All that willpower. It’s delicious. But I’m getting bored now. Give it up. And don’t feel bad about Sherlock. You should be proud. You raised your little brother right, didn’t you? He jumped to save his friends, and to save you, and that’s kind of noble. Stupid, but noble.”

Moriarty raised his head suddenly, surprised by a noise. Then he grinned again.

“Oh, how darling. Your bodyguard is here. She smells lovely, doesn’t she? Positively _edible_. And she’s still trying to guard your body. How about I make my final push, then. I can let the fox loose in you, and you can go eat your little chicken.”

Mycroft Holmes closed his eyes and when the fox pushed against his brain, he pushed back, and hoped to god it would give him an aneurism.

*

Sally paused at the entrance, gun drawn, watching. Anthea had crept out onto the rooftop and was crouched behind a cooling tower, her gun trained on Mycroft Holmes. Anthea was frowning and her gun hand was trembling.

Moriarty halted in his awful speech to cock his head. Sally heard that terrible, wicked voice tell Mycroft that it was over. Mycroft was about to become possessed by the fox, and then he’d be made to kill Anthea.

Mycroft was losing the fight, Sally could see. He was almost as pale as John Watson from the loss of blood, but his waxy skin was covered in a sheen of perspiration. His lips were going blue.

He wasn’t long for the world, one way or another. Dead soon, or alive as a puppet of the fox.

 _I’d rather be dead too_ , Sally thought. _That was our job. To let him die human, not be used._

Sally looked at Anthea, who scowled. Anthea's hand steadied. She took a bead on Mycroft.

_She shouldn’t have to do that. She shouldn’t have to kill the man she loves._

On the rooftop, Mycroft’s hair turned a deeper auburn, the fur began to thicken on his hands. His eyes began to turn ember dark.

And suddenly, for the merest moment, the roof wasn’t there. Moriarty, Mycroft, Anthea, all gone, replaced by a dizzying swirl of images.

A fox with Mycroft Holmes’s eyes lapping, slurping, at a rose garland around the King’s throat.

Anthea’s face twisting, growing teeth and madness at the sight of a heavy, pendulous disk of pearl on velvet, bones popping and skin splitting and the ragged tail wagging as the wolf that used to be a woman crunched small bones, fragile, newborn bones, and sang to the moon.

Mrs Hudson’s face in a cloud of forget-me-nots, all teeth and thirst, feeding on a little girl.

A cloud of fine snow, the finest, falling, falling, and she knew, she _knew_ , that it was the dust of John Watson, settling like grief on the carpet of 221B Baker Street.

Behind the cloud of dust, holding the sharp-ended tree branch, was the man in ash, but changed, now a red-and-silver fox, with ember eyes. Lestrade in body only, his mind and heart belonging to the fox now.

Sherlock Holmes, hand to his chest that was blooming flowers – red roses, red carnations, red poppies, red, red, red – and the Mycroft fox howling a shrill cry before launching himself at his brother’s throat.

 _I’m dreaming_ , Sally realised.

 _This is the future_.

And as suddenly, the vision was gone, leaving only Anthea, slowly squeezing the trigger; Mycroft, still fighting, teeth clenched, his voice a rising whine as he began to succumb.

_No. No.  No no no. This stops. This ends now._

Gun raised, Sally stepped out onto the roof, stepped out into this crucial point, this fulcrum of the future, between Anthea and Mycroft.

_Let Mycroft die human, but on his own. No-one should have to kill the one they love._

“Leave him be.” Stupid, perhaps, to alert the fox, but she couldn’t just shoot him in the back. A failing, probably. The Holmeses would certainly think so. Perhaps John Watson, too, given his stealth earlier, despatching the vampires, the deadliest of their obstacles, with such ruthless efficiency. So, yes, it was stupid to give this monster warning, but Sally Donovan was who she was, and she couldn’t do it another way.

Moriarty shot her a look of annoyance, then his brow cleared. (For the moment, the pressure on  Mycroft eased, and his eyes were filled with pain and despair, but they were his own human eyes, at least.)

“Well, well, you’re the other little dreamer my cub thinks about. Look at you. Funny little thing. Running around trying to make sense of it all, with your funny little dreams.” His nose wrinkled with distaste. “You think you have something special, the way you dream. You’re not special. You’re _ordinary_ , like Sherlock Holmes was ordinary, like John Watson, just an ordinary vampire. Nothing special. So dull and stupid, I could make them do anything I wanted, and I did. And I can do anything I want to you too.”

Sally’s aim did not waver. She took a half step closer.

Moriarty spread his arms wide in mocking invitation.

“You won’t,” he said confidently, “You’re one of the good guys. On the side of the angels. You should have wings and a halo, you’re so _good_. You good, boring, tedious little warrior for the angels.”

Sergeant Sally Donovan pulled the trigger and Moriarty staggered back a single step, the look of surprise on his face almost comical. He looked down at the bloom of red on his chest.

Sally scowled in annoyance. She’d missed.

 _Aim for the heart and the head_ , John Watson had said, _that’s very effective for pretty much everything._

Sally strode towards Moriarty as Moriarty began to change.

“Maybe I am a warrior for the angels,” said Sally, adjusting her aim, “Have you seen pictures of angels in churches? Big fuck off swords, they’ve got. You should pay attention.”

His face grew long and sharp, his hands shrank and become clawed as he scrabbled away from her. His foxy face twisted wrongly as he spoke.

“I can shift,” he said, in a gasping whine, “I can _heal_.” He had got to the edge of the roof now, bleeding onto the concrete yet bizarrely confident that he was going to get away.

And another flash in Sally’s head, another kaleidoscope of images. Dust and red blooms and the crunching of bones. Different images, perhaps, but the wicked fox was still in the centre of them. Healed and warped as ever.

Sally Donovan stood far enough away from the fox that he couldn’t scratch her, and aimed carefully.

The fox whined and began to rise, hand pressed to its white belly that had stopped bleeding now. He was starting to grin once more.

The bullet caught him between those mad eyes of his and he pitched back, his body poised for a moment, between fox and man, between sky and earth, between surprise and oblivion.

Then gravity wound around the still form and pulled it down, hard and fast. Sally kneeled, put her hand on the ledge and leaned over to see.

On the street below, a fox. What was left of a fox. Blood. Fur. Pieces and parts. It was disgusting. Horrific.  Over. It was _over_.

The bile rose up and Sally turned her head to be sick on the rooftop, heaving until she was empty.

Once she regained her breath, she wiped her mouth on her sleeve and peeped over the edge again. Mycroft’s people were there already, gathering up the pieces of the fox and placing them in separate bags, hosing down the pavement, making it all go away.

Her uneasiness made way for relief.

 _It was over_. In her mind’s eye, that future of blood and blooms, of dust and death, blew away. Something else was there, something she couldn’t see yet, and it was not devoid of darkness, but mostly it was green and growing. Mostly it was good.

Mostly.

She heard a soft cry and turned her head to see Anthea sitting with Mycroft, his head cradled in her lap, heedless of the blood soaking her clothes as she stroked his hair.

 


	8. Chapter Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mycroft has lost too much blood to survive. He knows it, too. So he asks John Watson to save him. John doesn't think 'save' is the right word. For a start, Mycroft Holmes will have to die anyway, and there's no guarantee he'll wake up on the other side of that. And if he does - how dangerous will he be, until he remembers who he is? And how dangerous might he be after he does?

The lift would have been less conspicuous, but time remained of the essence. Despite his limp – John’s leg wound still hurt and was getting more rather than less inflamed – they took the stairs. Sherlock clutched onto John’s shoulders, legs wound around his waist,  while John’s hands gripped Sherlock’s thighs to keep him hitched up. Sherlock grit his teeth against the pain in his bruising torso and held tighter, trying to limit the uncomfortable jostling.

The two of them did not make an elegant picture, and John’s gait was uneven, but they still moved faster than the lift would have taken them up.

They encountered Mycroft’s small team of agents ascending the stairs at a run. John had to slow down to pass or risk a collision. The team leader stood in their path, gun warily drawn, and John scowled as he stopped.

The team regarded the vampire giving the detective a piggy back with the studiously neutral expressions that could only be maintained by a complete professional in the face of the utterly bizarre.

John paused to let Sherlock to the ground.

“Mr Holmes’s bodyguard is on the scene,” said the team leader quietly, “She indicates she does not have a clear shot at the fox.” The man was staring at Sherlock’s face with consternation.

“What?” snarled Sherlock, and then he raised a hand to his face, encountering the sticky blood he hadn’t yet had a chance to remove. “Don’t be an idiot. This isn’t mine,” he said as he raised part of his torn shirt to scrub at his forehead, “It’s Myc…”

Sherlock stumbled to silence.

“Congratulations on surviving your fall, Mr Holmes,” the team leader said crisply into the charged paused, “I’ve sent the message to Mr Holmes’s bodyguard.”

“Party hats later,” snapped Sherlock, “What about Mycroft?”

“He has control,” frowned the man, “Our agent says any move will certainly lead to his death.”

“Any failure to act will lead to the same,” snapped Sherlock and he turned, coat swirling, to continue the upward rush.

From the rooftop, two floors away, came a short, sharp report.

Sherlock ran. A moment later, there was a second shot. Through the corner of his eye, Sherlock saw a shape hurtled briefly past the window. Behind him, three of Mycroft’s pack began the rapid descent once more. His lieutenant was barking instructions into a two-way.

John’s arm scooped around Sherlock’s waist mid-step as John caught up, practically carrying Sherlock up the final flights of stairs.

They burst onto the rooftop to see Anthea sitting on the roof, Mycroft’s head in her lap, her hands stroking his hair. She was sitting in a pool of his blood, soaked in it, uncaring.

Sally Donovan was standing next to Anthea, looking grim. She still held her gun.

There seemed to be no rush after all. There seemed nothing left to do, now.

Sherlock stood at his brother’s feet, hands clenching and unclenching, while John kneeled by the dying man. John pulled Mycroft’s suit and shirt aside to look at the terrible mess the bullet had made of his neck and collarbone. He flinched at the smell of so much blood, then bent over his cupped hand, allow the saliva triggered by the scent pool into the well of his palm. He pressed the spit to the wound, and the skin, bone and muscle began to mend. The bleeding stopped and slowed.

But Mycroft had lost too much blood. The healing properties of vampire saliva could only achieve so much. Stop the flow, yes. Repair damaged tissue, yes. Replace the blood lost? No. That, the body did, once it was no longer torn. The saliva might accelerate the process to a degree, but not with sufficient speed. Not with the amount of blood Mycroft had lost.

Anthea stroked Mycroft’s hair and Mycroft gazed mutely up at her. His hand clutched hers as he laboured for breath. John could scent the remnants of the fox in Mycroft’s spilled blood, but there was nothing of the fox left in his body now. Mycroft’s mind was at last his own again.

He got to die human, at least. And he would die soon.

Sherlock’s expression was twisted with anger and distress. “You idiot, Mycroft. We had it under control. You were supposed to _wait_. You’d _delegated_ your suicide to people who knew more than you did. You should have _trusted_ them. Trusted _us_. Trusted _me_.”

Mycroft turned his gaze to Sherlock’s. “You’re alive,” he breathed, in wonder and a painful happiness.

“You must be dying if you’re pointing out the bloody obvious,” snarled Sherlock. Then he dropped to his knees, reaching for Mycroft’s free hand. “Don’t. Don’t die. I forbid it.”

Mycroft smiled sadly at his brother, then turned his head a fraction to look at John. “Thank you.”

“You know I’ll never let anything happen to him,” John said softly, “Never.”

Mycroft’s eyelids drifted shut for a second. When he opened them again, his old steel was back.

“Can you…?” he started, and he needed to stop for another sharp, shallow breath, “…turn me?”

John blinked. “What?”

“Make me…a vampire. Is it. Too late?”

“Mycroft, do you know what you’re asking?” It was one thing to have agreed this ahead of time with Sherlock. This was the request of a dying man, desperate to live. Had he thought through the consequences? Did he even know what they were? Sherlock lived with a vampire; he saw those consequences every day. He’d seen the blind thirst, the loss of control. He’d been told the stories. Sherlock knew the worst that could happen. Did Mycroft?

Mycroft frowned haughtily, which almost made John laugh – such a typical Holmesian expression of irritation and disdain. Mycroft definitely _thought_ he knew what he was asking. 

“So much. To do. So much. Still. I’m. Not ready. To die.” Mycroft squeezed Anthea’s hand feebly, and she stroked his cheek.

“You have to die anyway, Mycroft,” said John grimly, “That’s how this works.”

“Please.” Mycroft’s voice was a ghost.

John glanced at Sherlock, who looked at him with so much impatient hope it was painful. A look to Anthea produced a more fierce expression. “He knows the risks, Dr Watson,” she said, “Please. Save him.”

“I don’t think saving’s the right word,” John said, and he looked to Sally Donovan, as though hers was the deciding opinion.

Sally shook her head. “Don't look at me. I just shot a naked, insane fox spirit in the head and watched it fall off a building. I'm not sure I'm a good judge of _rational_ any more.”

“That seems to make you the perfect judge,” said John, “I want to do it. I can. I don’t know if it’s _wise_.”

“Is he as important as he seems to think he is?”

“To the government?” said John, “I’m certain he is.” His gaze flickered between Sherlock and Anthea. _To these two_ , he seemed to say, _he definitely is_. 

Sally’s chin jerked up in decision. “Well, you’re not so bad for a vampire. Maybe they don’t all have to be arses. Turn him, Doctor Watson, and if he goes rogue, you and I will know what to do about it.”

Decided, John knelt closer and pressed fingers to Mycroft’s cheek.

“You can’t come back without dying first,” said John, enunciating carefully, “Some people don’t come back at all. And it will be hard, afterwards. You have no idea how hard.”

“I have,” rasped Mycroft, “Some idea.” His gaze went up to Anthea’s again. “You will. Keep your. Promise. If you. Must.”

Anthea nodded. “I have your back, sir. If you lose yourself to the thirst, I’ll keep my promise. I will, sir.” She stroked his hair again. “I will never let you down again, Mycroft.”

“You. Have. Never. Failed. Me. Evelyn.”

Anthea – or rather Evelyn – pushed angrily at a tear with the back of her wrist. Instead of replying she cast a fierce glare at John Watson. “He knows the risks. He’s _studied_ them. Turn him, Doctor Watson. _Try_.”

John took Mycroft’s jaw in his hands and turned his head so they looked eye to eye.

“Tell me again. Is this what you want?”

“Yes,” breathed Mycroft, “Do it.”

In the next moment, John was sitting astride Mycroft’s body, pinning his legs and arms with his supernaturally strong hands.

“Everyone, stand aside.”

Nobody moved and John glared at them all. “If I’m doing this, you absolutely _have_ to do what I say, or things are going to turn very bad, very fast. You stand back and you _do not touch him_ unless I give you the all clear. If he wakes up from this, he’s going to wake up _thirsty_. _Stand the fuck back_. That includes you, Sherlock. Especially you.” As Sherlock began to complain, John snapped, “And bloody watch. You may change your mind about the future once you’ve actually seen this happen.”

Reluctantly, Anthea moved away. Sally drew her away, and Sherlock stood on Sally’s other side, watching intently.

“Mycroft.” Mycroft didn’t respond to John’s voice and he spoke again, more sharply, commanding attention. “Mycroft Holmes!”

Mycroft’s eyes opened.

“In a moment, you’re going to drink my blood. Then I’ll hold you down,” said John, “When you wake up, try to remember who I am. Try to remember who _you_ are. Try to remember not to fight me.”

Mycroft smiled wanly. “I shall do better than try, Doctor Watson.”

John pressed the nail of his left thumb to his right wrist and dragged it, opening a shallow wound in the flesh. Dark vampire blood welled.

“Open up.”

Mycroft opened his mouth. Blood beaded in the wound, gathered, began to drip.

“This is going to taste disgusting,” John warned.

Mycroft’s eyes crinkled in an actual smile as the first drop hit his tongue, and he flinched. He scrunched his face up. The next drip landed on his closed lips and he tried not to let the fluid in.

“It’s not nearly enough,” said John, “You’ve lost a lot of blood but you need a lot higher ratio of vampire blood to what you’ve got left for this to work. Do you want me to go on?”

In answer, Mycroft opened his mouth again. His eyes showed resolve, and only a little fear.

“I don’t have to do this,” said John, a plea in his tone, “You don’t have to.”

Mycroft glared and opened his mouth wider.

John nodded. He dug his thumbnail into his wrist to further open the wound, and his blood flowed more freely. A few more drops fell onto Mycroft’s tongue, and then John pressed the wound directly against Mycroft’s mouth.

Automatically, Mycroft – with strength that had, until a moment ago, abandoned him – seized John’s arm and held it firmly as he began to suck. And suck. And suck. Greedily. Noisily. John winced, then grit his teeth on a cry and then, as Mycroft seemed to actually bite the bleeding cut, John hissed a string of swear words, but he didn’t pull away.

Instead, Mycroft Holmes made a choking noise and then went rigid, his back arching in a seizure. John pulled his arm from Mycroft’s mouth and instead grasped Mycroft’s upper arms, holding him down as he thrashed and choked and cried out.

It was horrible. The most urbane, the most polished and disciplined man in all of Europe, thrashing on the ground like a rabid animal, in a pool of his own blood, his lips and teeth stained dark with a thing that was inhabiting his body, taking it to death. His eyes contained no intelligence. Only fear and pain and desperation, and a burning will to live. 

Sherlock and Anthea both moved to assist and John, fangs extended, hissed at them. “ _Stay away_!”

Soon, the convulsions ceased and Mycroft Holmes lay on the roof of St Bart’s, smeared in blood, clothes torn.

Dead.

John looked little better, his always pale skin almost ashen, his movements lethargic now. His fangs were descended and his eyes a little glazed.

“John”

John looked up at Sherlock’s voice. “I’m still here,” he said, making Sally wonder what the question was, “Didn’t know… it was so hard… to be the initiator. Fuck. I feel shite.” He puffed a laugh but Sherlock didn’t laugh with him.

“How long?” Sherlock asked.

“Not sure. With me… a couple of minutes, I think. My monitor was still flat-lining. Nobody came. We were under attack and nobody came, so I… so I…”  John shook his head. “I didn’t know what I was, or where I was, let alone who I was. Not for hours.” He straightened his spine. “Don’t come near. If he gets away from me, run. He may not know you, and he’s going to be so thirsty.”

John knelt more firmly on the dead man’s legs, favouring his wounded thigh, and picked up Mycroft's limp arms to that he could pin them by the wrists above his head, braced as though expecting to be bucked off in a wild fury at any moment.

Hoping that he would, at least.

And they waited.


	9. Chapter Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mycroft Holmes dies human. He wakes up vampire. Also amnesiac, terrified and terribly, terribly thirsty.

The moments ticked by in a terrible silence.   _Tick. Tick. Tick._ Like a bomb.

Sherlock breathed short and sharp through his nose, as though waking suddenly, and began to step away, only to be brought up short by a ferocious glare from John.

“You stay,” growled John, “You need to see this. You need to understand what it is. In case… In case.”

“He’ll need blood,” Sherlock said, calmly, reasonably. There was something wild in John’s eye, something untamed and bleak. They could all see it.

“You. _Stay_.”

“I’ll…” began Anthea – Evelyn perhaps they should call her now, though it seemed wrong. _Evelyn_ was Mycroft’s to say to her.

“You’re covered in blood,” Sherlock pointed out, and the two of them stared at each other. She was covered in _Mycroft’s_ blood. Some of Mycroft’s blood was still crusted on Sherlock’s face, in his hair, too.

Sally looked from one haunted face to another. “Stay with him. I’ll go,” she said, and moved past them.

She had no idea how she was going to get the hospital staff to give her bags of blood without telling them why she needed it. And she was certainly not going to tell them why she needed it.

At the stairwell door, she encountered the leader of Mycroft’s extraction team, who had been reduced to extracting bits of dead fox from the street. The man was tense, gun ready, but with clue what he was supposed to do now. This situation was unprecedented. He was waiting from instruction from Anthea, but she had done no more than signal _Stop. Wait_. And so he stopped and waited.

Sally looked over her shoulder, then back at the agent.

“We need bags of blood from the hospital. I don’t know how many. Three or four, at least. Is that something you can do without having to answer any questions?”

His gaze flicked over her shoulder, full of questions himself, but he just nodded.

“Fast as you can, then,” said Sally in as firm a command voice as she could, “I’ll wait here for you.”

The agent took off, speaking swiftly and quietly into his two-way.

Sally turned to look at the tableau on the rooftop. Those four people, still as stone. Still as death.

She closed her eyes, but there were no more visions. She hoped this at least meant that what was happening here was not a crucial moment. Not the fulcrum of the future she had interrupted when she walked between Anthea and Mycroft. She hoped the darkness she had sensed in the future was just the usual kind, the run of the mill human badness of murder and extortion and assault. (She tried not to think about the blazing angel from her dreams, and how she seemed to have been that terrifying, righteous creature. She was _not_ an avenging angel. She was an ordinary copper, in way over her head. That was all.)

Hearing a small gasp, Sally opened her eyes again. Anthea was watching Mycroft, and it seemed she was the one who had drawn the sudden breath. She was all disciplined calm again now. Sherlock had lifted his gaze from Mycroft’s slack, motionless face to regard John, poised tensely over Mycroft’s body, with careful calculation.

“John?” she heard him say, “Are you all right.”

“Of course I’m not all right,” replied John tensely, but not angrily. “I know what this is like from his side.”

The sun moved incrementally across the sky. The traffic hummed below. An ambulance came, another left. Horns and helicopters and pigeons and ships horns in the distance. London being London, although part of her lay dead on a rooftop.

That dead part of her twitched, slightly. A little finger jumping.

Sally stepped forward, to witness this. To try to understand. By the time she was four paces away, the finger had twitched twice more. A foot had jerked momentarily.

John Watson was crouched on that body, straddling its thighs, holding its hands down, ready.

_Ready for what?_

Then a pair of pale blue eyes snapped open.

And they were blank.

And then they were filled with terror.

Mycroft’s body began to arch up and he was choking, as though suffocating, trying to take a breath but unable to remember how.

And then the terrible dragging gasp of it, that lungful of air his body didn’t really need, his body reacting instinctively with horror and fear at the realisation, trying to breathe anyway.

The exhale was a cry of pain and rage, and devolved into a shout of absolute, unholy terror. Mycroft’s body arched in a way that must have been painful, collapsed, arched again, as he gasped for air, wailed, gasped again, and began to fling himself about, trying to rise.

He screamed.

The convulsions as he died and the vampire blood began to inhabit his body were nothing compared to this wild, frantic, terror filled thrashing. 

And John had him, from the start, pinned down, legs and arms, tried to keep him still as Mycroft Holmes – man of elegance, of poise, of the utmost self-containment and grace and cool charm – sobbed and tried desperately to escape from the invisible, unknown monster in his veins.

John wrestled him down, viciously almost, except that he was saying: “Ssssh, hush now, it’s all right, ssshhh, you’re not alone, sshhh, it’s all right. I’m here. I’m here. You’re not alone, Mycroft. It’ll be all right. Come on, now. Hush. Don’t be scared. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

In reply, Mycroft’s face contorted and he bared his fangs in an animal rage, and without warning John responded in kind. He pushed Mycroft down and roared in his face, teeth out, blue eyes blazing, and Mycroft thrashed, sobbing.

“What’s your name?” John yelled, pulling back slightly, “Tell me your name. Remember who you are.”

Mycroft struggled, then snapped, trying to bite. He looked terrified and ruined, lost and alone.

Glancing up at the other witnesses to his atrocity, Sally thought Sherlock and Anthea both looked much the same.

John persisted, slamming Mycroft back to the ground time and again.

“Stay down. Stay _still_. Remember. You can. You will. Remember your name. Come on. Tell me. Tell me your name. _Tell me who you are_. **_Remember_**.”

Finally, exhaling cries and then gulping desperately for air again, Mycroft subsided.

“I’m… I’m…”

“That’s it. You can do this. Tell me your name.”

“I can’t…” The despairing wail rose up again.

“You can. You promised me you could. Tell me.”

“Mmm-m-mei…”

“Come on, now,” John’s voice was gentler again, “Come on, you can do this. Come back to us. It won’t be so hard if you can remember who you are. Please.”

“Maaaah… my….Myc…”

“That’s it. You know who you are. You know.”

“My my my,” and he shuddered, as though that syllable brought horror to him, “Mycroft.”

“That’s it. Good man. Mycroft. Good.” John slumped over him, forehead pressed to forehead. “Good man. Mycroft. Do you know me?”

“J-j-j-John.”

“Yeah. I’m John. Good.”

John eased up, and Mycroft bucked, trying to throw him off again. John was forced to hold him down once more.

“No. Be still. _Be still_.”

“I can smell... I can… I can smell blood.” Mycroft twisted, teeth bared, and looked wildly around. His gaze alighted on Sally first and she took an involuntary step back at the hunger in it. Ravenous. Unthinking.

“Mycroft. _Mycroft_!” John banged Mycroft’s head on the concrete to make him listen, “I know you’re thirsty. I’ll get you blood. All the blood you need. Soon. Right now you have to look at me. **_Look at me_**.”

The vampire who used to be Mycroft Holmes glared at him.

“Breathe. It helps." 

Mycroft began to moan.

“I know,” said John, his voice almost breaking with what he knew, “It’s going to be all right, but you’re not going to die again. It feels like that, but you can wait a little. I promise you can. Tell me your name. Your full name.”

“M-m-mycroft H-h-h-holmes.”

“And who are you?”

A keening followed by a growl. “I don’t know.”

“Yes you do. Tell me.”

“A-a-a-a…”

“Concentrate.”

“I’m a… civil servant.”

John grinned at him, without letting him go. “Yes, you are. The most civil civil servant on the planet, except when you’re being an enormous unmitigated prick. Aren’t you?”

Mycroft looked at John and laughed a little. “Yes, I am.”

“And you are the most disciplined man I know. So start being disciplined. Inhale.”

Mycroft took a breath, and gave John a look of distress and doubt.

“Exhale now. Slowly,” said John, “That’s it. Now in. Good. Concentrate on that.”

Mycroft concentrated. Breathed in. Out. In. Out. Physically unnecessary but psychologically calming. John kept Mycroft pinned with one hand and reached out to the pool of blood under them with the other. He swiped his hand through the congealing mess and wiped Mycroft’s own blood against Mycroft’s mouth. Mycroft whined.

“Lick it up. It’ll help.”

Mycroft licked and whined again, more softly.

“There you go.” John scraped more of the blood up, stuck his fingers in Mycroft’s mouth. “Good, good. Calm down, now. I can’t get you fed until you calm down. Shh, now. Shh.”

Mycroft Holmes, eyes closed, suckled his own blood from John’s fingers and quieted.

“Where the hell is that blood,” John scowled, looking up at Sally.

“I’ll… I’ll check,” she said, backing away from the feral look on his face.

John flinched and looked back to Mycroft. Then he looked up at Anthea and Sherlock.

Anthea’s eyes were fixed on Mycroft’s face, and were filled not with horror, which would surely have been the sensible reaction, but hope.

Sherlock, though. He was looking at John, with understanding and… and actually _anger_. John flinched again.

“I’m not angry at _you_ ,” snapped Sherlock impatiently, “I want to kill that bastard Sebastian Moran all over again. He did _this_ to you. He left you to wake up like _that_. Alone and terrified, and _starving_. No wonder you…” He snapped his jaw shut on the sentence - _no wonder you killed your hospital roommate and that Afghani girl before you even remembered your own name_ \- and shook his head. “It wasn’t your fault, John.”

John blinked and swayed slightly.

Mycroft bucked again, teeth snapping, and John struggled to keep him still.

“I thought,” said John, “I could try to get him down to the blood stores, but I can’t. I’m not strong enough. I can barely keep him under control here.” He shook his head. “You two, off the roof. If I lose him, he’s going to go straight for you.”

But Anthea knelt beside him. She held out her arm. “He needs blood. Give him mine.”

Mycroft surged towards her and John slammed him down again.

“Don’t be stupid,” snarled John, “If he gets his teeth into you he won’t know how to stop. He’s _thirsty_. He’s **_starving_**. And he really doesn’t remember who he is yet. Not properly. Not who he wants to be. He could kill you, and when he finally comes to himself again…”

Anthea rolled her eyes at John. She drew a small, sharp knife from a hidden sheath at her ankle and held it to her forearm. “I never said he should _bite_ me. Come on, sir,” she said to Mycroft, who was staring at her avidly, “You don’t want to waste any.”

He opened his mouth wide and Anthea drew the blade along the skin, deeper than at all comfortable, but not dangerously so. Blood welled and dripped and she held it over his mouth, and he gulped at it. Licked the drips from his lips and opened his mouth for more. Like a baby bird.

She didn’t seem to notice that John stared at the blood just as avidly.

After a short time – too short, if Mycroft’s enraged growl was anything to go by – she withdrew, wrapping her hand over the wound.

“Blood given freely,” said Sherlock quietly, “Is best. Is it enough?”

John shook his head. “Doesn’t look like it. He woke up with nothing much in him but vampire blood, and it… it… I can’t describe it. The thirst.”

He flinched again as Sherlock’s hand pressed against his scalp. “John.”

“In case you haven’t realised,” said John shakily, “I don’t really know what I’m doing. I haven’t done this before. From the outside. I’m just guessing, here. Educated guesses, maybe, but… I don’t think it’s enough. Look at him.”

Mycroft looked tortured, and debauched, and terrifying.

Sherlock held out his arm. “We’ll give him some of mine, then.”

John nodded and used his thumbnail to score a wound in Sherlock’s arm. Mycroft opened up again to swallow the drips greedily. A few minutes later, Sherlock held his arm up for John.

“You can close the wound. And you need the blood, too.”

John shook his head. “I… Sherlock right now I don’t know if I could stop. I really don’t know if I could. Best back away now.”

Instead of arguing, Sherlock did as he was told.

And finally, Sally and the agent returned, bearing bags of blood. The team leader froze, even this hardened field agent shocked at the carnage in front of him. Sally thrust a bag of blood at John. “I’m assuming blood type doesn’t count.”

John grabbed the bag, tore a hole in it and pushed it into Mycroft’s mouth. Mycroft sucked greedily on it.

John put his hand out for another and had it ready moments later when Mycroft had drained the first.

On the third bag, John carefully released Mycroft’s hands and let him hold the bag, squeezing it for every drop of blood it contained.

“John,” Sherlock tried to push a pouch of blood at John, “You need this.”

But John was shaking his head, and his hands were shaking too, and he was almost whimpering without realising it. “He needs it, he _needs_ it,” John was saying, “He’ll be so thirsty. So thirsty. I remember. I remember it. I… I… the things I _did_ , Sherlock. I was so thirsty. I can’t let him. I can’t. I can’t let. I…” He was shoving the blood that Sherlock had tried to give him into Mycroft’s mouth, and then looked up. “If this isn’t enough, he’ll kill you. He’ll kill all of you. I can’t let him… this was a terrible idea.”

Sherlock patted John’s scalp again, stroked it soothingly. “You’re doing fine, John. He’s all right.”  He darted a look at Mycroft, who was blinking in a daze, less savage now, but more lost.

“John?” said Mycroft in a bewildered voice.

John returned instantly to his patient. “Right here, Mycroft.”

“Has it… have I… did it work?”

“Yeah,” John said, “But you need to stay there right now. Okay?”

Mycroft frowned and looked around. He saw Sherlock first, and his frown deepened.

Then he saw Anthea, her clothes stiff with drying blood. She was wrapping a length of cloth she’d torn from her shirt around her arm. “Evelyn?”

“It’s all right, sir,” she said, as calm and cool as ever, while looking like a murder scene, “Everything’s going to be all right.”

As though everything was suddenly snapping into focus, Mycroft seemed to come fully awake. Fully aware. Of everything. Every single thing from the last fifteen minutes.

He’d looked lost before. Now he looked damned.

He buried his face in his hands, as much to not look at them as to hide himself. “Dear god. Dear god, what am I? This is not. This is…” He swallowed convulsively.

“It’s all right, Mycroft,” said John gently, “You’re all right. You haven’t killed anyone. You’re not alone. We can help you through this.”

Mycroft felt a gentle hand on his face and dared to open his eyes. Anthea was stroking his cheek with the back of her fingers. “You’re not alone, sir,” she said, with that Mona Lisa smile of hers, “We’ve got you. Like I promised.”

“Evelyn…”

“It’s all right, Mycroft.”

Mycroft closed his eyes. “I’m so sorry, my dear. I always meant for there to be time, but the time was never right.” She stroked his cheek, and Mycroft leaned into her touch briefly.

“You have, in fact, botched the timing wretchedly today,” said Sherlock suddenly, a little waspishly, smothering relief in the patterns of old.

Mycroft opened his eyes, looking more like the Mycroft of old, guarded and in control. “I realise, Sherlock,” he said with a sharp glance at his brother, “That I made a mess of your plans. It was rather difficult to do otherwise, with _him_ increasingly invading my thoughts. It was necessary to _not_ consider what you might be planning. By the end, what I knew, he was starting to know. At that moment, when I began to realise what you were planning, I had to act to keep the knowledge from him.”

“So you tried to shoot yourself in the head?” Sherlock sounded unimpressed.

“It was effective,” said Mycroft, not quite nonchalantly, “The pain did rather keep my mind off your own schemes. It seems to have paid off, regardless.”

His urbanity was in sharp contrast to his state of bloodied dishevelment, and the fact that he had a short, exhausted vampire sitting on top of him.

“Dr Watson, I believe you may get up now,” said Mycroft, trying for acerbity and failing. When John didn’t move, Mycroft repeated, more firmly. “Doctor Watson."

John raised his head slowly. Stared at Mycroft. Blinked.

Showed his fangs and hissed.

When Sherlock knelt beside him, John turned his head and snarled wordlessly at him. 

“Blood,” snapped Sherlock, holding out his hand towards Sally. He wiggled his fingers impatiently. “Come on, Donovan, _blood_.”

“We only brought the four bags.”

Sherlock glared at her.

“I didn’t realise. There’s not exactly a study unit on this at the police academy!”

“Well, _get some more_.”

Sally and the agent turned to obey.

Sherlock slid his arm around John’s shoulders. John hissed at him.

“Shh, John,” said Sherlock as soothingly as he could, “It’s all right. You’ll get blood soon.”

John lunged for Sherlock’s throat, fisting his hands in Sherlock’s coat, pushing his face into that warm hollow, and the tips of his teeth were pressed to that warm skin.

Sherlock held still. Perfectly still.

And then John whimpered, pushing his nose into the scent of him. He hung onto the coat, and whined, and shivered.

“Sherlock,” he said hoarsely, “Help. Me.”


	10. Chapter Ten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John is wounded and depleted and starving, and he nearly tore out Sherlock's throat a moment ago. Instead he clings and reminds himself that Sherlock Holmes is Home and Safety. He'll get blood soon enough, from an unlikely source. It's coming to an end, this nightmare, and some things will never be the same again, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been a bit intense and superfast! I'm taking a little break from Sherlock fic while I finish writing Kitty and Cadaver (one of my original fic projects). Though knowing me, that means there'll probably be another story in one of my verses within a fortnight. I can't ever stay away for long. :)

Sherlock’s arms were around John’s shoulders and, without realising he was doing so, he was rocking John in his arms. John whimpered again, pressing his face against Sherlock’s skin, inhaling deeply of the scent. Blood, yes. But wool. Chemicals. Sherlock. Home. Sherlock. Not food. _Home home home_. John clung to that, desperately.

Sherlock tried shoving his still bleeding arm into John’s mouth, but John recoiled, terrified that once he started he would not be able to stop. Sherlock gave it up, and wrapped his arms back around John instead.

“All right then,” he said, “I won’t. Shh, now. Sally’s getting blood for you. It’s all right.”  He looked up at Mycroft. “Are _you_ all right?”

“I’m …oh. You mean, am I safe? I… believe so.”

Sherlock scowled at him. Mycroft glared back.

“Yes, Sherlock, I am quite restored. What’s wrong with his leg?”

John curled his body into a smaller space, but his leg wouldn’t obey. His wounded thigh was swollen horribly now, and black blood crusted the wound. “Stabbed with silver while extracting Lestrade and Mrs Hudson,” said Sherlock, “He ran across London with it, and up the stairs here, without cleaning it properly. It’s getting worse. I need water to flush it with. Any taps up here?”

Anthea, with a pat of Mycroft’s hand, rose to look. She found an outlet by the side of the staircase, alongside… well, it looked like some enterprising hospital worker was growing a little patch of personal use marijuana. Beside the planter was a small watering can painted in green enamel. She filled it and brought it over to them.

“I need to see to your leg,” Sherlock murmured to John, who didn’t reply, but shivered and pressed closer to him. Awkwardly, Sherlock reached around, but couldn’t get in the right position. Anthea crouched and took her knife out again, cutting away the cloth around the wound.

The injury was worse once revealed. Dark purple lines radiated from the shallow stab wound, and congealed black blood oozed from it. Sherlock held out his hand and Anthea passed the knife to him. Using the tip, Sherlock pressed. A gout of congealed blood pulsed out and John hissed in pain. Sherlock prodded a little more, with the hilt of the knife this time, and more gunk came out. He nodded at Anthea then, and she poured water over it, washing the foul matter away.

“John,” said Sherlock, “This will hurt.”

“Hurts now,” John grit out.

“It’ll hurt more.”

John managed a laugh and released his fierce grip on Sherlock's jacket enough to allow Sherlock to manoeuvre. With his hands, Sherlock spread the cut wide, and Anthea poured water over it. Sherlock dug a finger into the wound, clearing out congealed blood until John’s dark, sluggish vampire blood was all he could see in the flesh. The veins began to clear, John’s vampire skin to return to its normal pallor. As Sherlock and Anthea watched – Anthea clearly taking mental notes – the flesh and skin began to knit together again, and John relaxed marginally.

“You should have seen to that,” Sherlock admonished him.

“If I had,” mumbled John, “You’d have died. I wouldn’t have made it here in time.”

Sherlock rested his cheek on John’s hair. “You’d have run faster without the injury.”

“Pillock.”

“You know I’m right.”

“Utter pillock.”

“By which I mean, thank you.”

John huffed a faint laugh. “Complete and utter pillock.”

“Do you think you can drink from me now?”

“I…” John’s voice broke down. “I.. don’t know. I’m afraid to try. If I hurt you…”

“Can you hold on, then?” Sherlock raised his head, listening, “Just a little longer? They’re on their way back.” _Or someone is._

Sherlock felt John burrow in closer, and wrapped his arms around John’s back again. It made John feel safe, to be held like this, and it made it easier for him to breathe in Sherlock’s scent, so associated with home and control. That it made Sherlock feel better too, that he could do at least _this_ , if nothing else, was a mere bonus, and one that Sherlock neither denied nor spoke of.

With his face pressed to Sherlock’s chest, John didn’t see who emerged onto the rooftop ahead of Sally Donovan and the agent. But he heard Sherlock’s heart beat increase.

“Sherlock…?” he said, worriedly, raising his head.

“Oh!” came Molly Hooper’s distinctive voice, “Mr Merriweather was right.”

“Molly?” Sherlock sounded genuinely shocked.

“One for you,” said Molly chirpily, handing a bag of blood to Mycroft Holmes. Mycroft stared at it, as though offended, but Anthea gave him an impatient look, so he tore it and drank from it, though much more daintily than before.

“And for you.” Molly crouched beside Sherlock and John and smiled encouragingly. She handed a bag of blood to John and he stared at the bag, at Molly, at the bag… then tore it clumsily, spilling blood over his hands. With a desperate whine, he sucked at the opening, slurping the blood down ravenously in seconds. He threw the bag away and licked at his hands, sucked at his shirt where the blood soaked in, until Molly pushed another into his hands and he bit it this time, bit and sucked and whimpered, and reached out for a third even before he’d finished the one in his mouth. It was animal and wretched, the way he drank.

Instead of recoiling, Sherlock rubbed John’s back and tried to shield him, as much as possible, from those on the rooftop who had never seen him like this. Sherlock glared at Sally Donovan. She just gave John a look of bewildered compassion and turned away.

Mycroft was staring, though. Horrified. Sherlock’s lip curled at his brother. “Don’t you dare, Mycroft.”

Mycroft raised an eyebrow, but he understood. He dare not judge John Watson. He had no right.

While John drank, eyes closed, Sherlock looked up at Molly. He was trying to deduce her. Something. Anything. But nothing, absolutely _nothing_ , could be read on her, about this. He could only surmise…

“Mr Merriweather told me,” she said in reply to Sherlock’s expression.

“Mr… Merriweather?”

“He’s a ghost. He works in the morgue. Or worked, though I suppose he does still, sort of. He likes to give advice.” Her nose wrinkled, as though that advice was not always welcome.

“A… ghost.”

“Do you remember, just before you met John,” Molly wittered on, “The body you whipped to check post-mortem lividity on injuries? That’s Mr Merriweather. Lovely man. I like him. He started haunting the morgue after that and I didn’t have the heart to make him leave, like all the others. He just wanted a bit of company.” The latter was wistful, like she knew just what Mr Merriweather meant.

“I… see,” said Sherlock, and he did, whether or not he wanted to. Ghosts. Of course. “And he… told you about vampires. Or have you met them?”

“Only the once. Mr Merriweather showed me how to stake him as he was waking up. He said it was for the best. But Mr Merriweather told me about John, before I mean, and then today he said something strange was going on up here on the roof, and he said I should bring some blood up, and, well, he was right. As usual. I met with Sergeant Donovan and... him, on the way.” She stopped and smiled nervously. “Is everything all right, now?”

Sherlock looked at her, looked around the rooftop at the people caked in blood, the vampires drinking deeply from bags of blood, at all the torn clothing and aftermath of mayhem, and he smiled warmly. At the distinct lack of lunatic fox spirits. “Never better, Molly. Thank you.”

“Oh. Good. Right then. Better get back to work. Do you need…?” Molly held up an empty bag, “More? Or…?”

“Thank you, Miss Hooper,” said Mycroft, who had finally risen to his feet. Despite the blood and ruination of his suit, despite his death-pale skin and mussed hair, he had gathered around himself an air of self-possession and command that would have been uncanny, if it hadn’t been exactly how he operated when he was human.

“Right. Well. See you,” she said, and departed, leaving a slightly stunned audience in her wake. Of all the things they’d seen today, it appeared that chirpy, practical, unfazed Molly Hooper was the most surprising.

Mycroft rose from the blood-stained ground and began to peel off his suit jacket. His collarbone was mended, he noted, rubbing fingers down his skin, and the hole in his neck completely healed. He turned to the still-stunned team leader. “Travers, fetch changes of clothes for Anthea and myself.” He glanced across to where his brother still held his… well, not simply _flatmate_ , obviously; his _friend_ , then. “Doctor Watson will also need a change of clothing, before we can leave the roof. Cloths to bathe with, too. And transport. I shall debrief you fully on the way back to the office.”

Travers gave his boss an uncomfortable look.

“Debrief, Travers, not _eat_. I’m fully sated, and I certainly will _not_ be in such a parlous state of hunger again. _Ever_.”

“We’ll have a routine blood delivery established from tomorrow,” said Anthea crisply, “Supplemented by volunteer amounts. Freely given, sir, as advised.” She smiled blandly at Travers.

“Yes sir. Ma’am.” Travers nodded, apparently satisfied, and disappeared to make the immediate arrangements.

Sally wished she could make things happen so effortlessly. She looked down at her mostly stain-free clothes and wondered how she’d managed to be the one who’d killed someone but ended up without a bloodstain on her.

Across from them all, John had stopped feeding. Sherlock sensed the change in him and looked down at his friend.

John had been licking his fingers, his lips, smearing a hand over his chin to catch every last drop of blood, but now he was still as stone, eyes wide with distress. The thirst had passed, and Sherlock (indeed, everyone) could see that John felt disgusted with himself. Exposed. Ashamed.

“John Watson,” Sherlock growled at him, “Don't you dare be ashamed of yourself.”

John gave him that haunted look again, the one Sherlock hated.

“Don’t you _dare_. That’s what Moran did to you? _That?”_ his tonemade it clear what he meant, everything they had just witnessed Mycroft endure. “The fact that you remain sane at all, that you did as little harm as you possibly could, that you _resisted_ and _survived_ without becoming a monster, is… I would say miracle, but I don’t believe in miracles. You did that _on your own_ , John. You controlled the vampire in you _on your own_ , without _anyone’_ s help.”

“Sherlock, I’m…”

“ _No_. _Stop it._ John, you saved my life today, even wounded by silver. Frankly, you saved me the first week you ever _knew_ me. And you saved Mycroft. You saved that girl… Penny. You do nothing, John, but _save_ people. Don't you _dare_ be ashamed of who you are. Or of what you need.”

John by now was looking not so much ashamed as bitter. “Even if what I need is four to six litres of warm blood straight from the source?”

“Even then.” Sherlock glared at him. “Not that you ever will. I keep _telling_ you, and you know how much I hate repeating myself. You are the best and wisest human, the kindest and bravest _man_ , I know. You have nothing to be ashamed of. I _trust_ you. And I will _always_ look after you."

“Because vampires as a whole need so much protection,” said John, but he was laughing quietly now.

“Some of them do. Yes.” Sherlock drew John against his chest, not caring who saw, and John, sighing, eased into the comfort.

"You hardly need four litres from me anwyay," said Sherlock crossly, "Blood gifted freely, John. It means something.”

"Yes it does," agreed John warmly. "It means everything."

His gaze caught Sally’s, though, and the tension began to rise in him again, until she shrugged.

“Doctor Watson, I’ve met lollipop ladies with meaner streaks and grosser habits, for a lot less reason than you’ve got for yours. Really. Sherlock’s right. You’ve no reason for embarrassment. You saved at least three lives today, including my boss, and converted a dead man into what one assumes is non-feral vampire without collateral damage. I’d say you’re well ahead of the game.”

Mycroft managed to look mildly offended and Sally just flashed him a sly grin. It didn't hurt to remind Mycroft Holmes that he'd need to curb his impulses, and that he'd need to watch John Watson for pointers on how to achieve that.

John looked at her as though he didn’t really believe her declaration of non-disgust, but Sherlock draped an arm around his shoulders and pulled John back in against his chest, and John went with it.

Sally didn’t think John needed the recovery time any more. She thought that Sherlock just wanted John closer for a moment, and John wanted that too; to be connected. She thought neither of them would appreciate her noticing the… well, _tenderness_ , that existed in the touch. _Two lost men, found_. She could see that now.

For a moment, she remembered that flash of the future that would not now happen. John falling to dust. Sherlock murdered by his fox-possessed brother. They would never know how close they came to losing it all.  She would certainly never tell them.

And it occurred to Sally that by stepping out onto the roof, keeping Anthea from attempting to shoot Mycroft, and by shooting Moriarty off the rooftop herself, she had saved them all. Anthea and Mycroft. John and Sherlock. Greg and Mrs Hudson. She had saved every one of them, and there was nobody to tell her she was amazing for doing it. Nobody to tell her she didn’t have to be ashamed of murdering that wicked man and letting him fall.

But it didn’t matter. She didn’t feel amazing, but she didn’t feel ashamed either. She’d done what had to be done, and she didn’t want them to know how close they came to the end of the world.

“I’ll just go… get some water,” she said, taking up the watering can and returning to the tap.

“I’ll help,” said Anthea.

At the tap, Anthea scooped water up and over her face, throat, hands. She bathed her wounded arm and peeled out of the trousers that stuck to her skin.

She smiled at Sally.

“I know,” she said. “I saw it. Some of it. Not much. I’m not that strong a dreamer, but the vision was… very powerful. It’s why my hand shook. I’d have shot Mycroft right through the head – or tried to. I don’t know how I would have missed, but I would have. The vision made that very clear.”

Sally swallowed and nodded.

“So. Sergeant Sally Donovan. Thank you for saving the world from James Moriarty.”

Sally regarded her solemnly, then grinned. “You’re very welcome. An. The. A.”

Anthea winked, and took a can of water back to Mycroft so he could wash his blood-encrusted face.

*

Travers returned with long coats, soap and cloths and, even more usefully, two helicopters to bring everyone away from the roof, once they’d had a cursory wash, bypassing both stairs and stares.

At Mycroft’s office that night, sometimes-Anthea made a few necessary adjustments to both Mycroft’s security and her own arsenal while he negotiated some impossible impasse involving the Albanians. She’d promised him she would stop him if he ever went rogue, so it was best he didn’t know all of her secrets. If she could keep them from him.

She was actually quite good at that. It was one of the things he liked about her. She didn’t expect to ever _need_ them, but she lived by her professionalism, by her promises to Mr Holmes, and she didn’t aim to get sloppy now. Even with the bunch of white carnations and blue violets that had appeared on her desk, the first time a bouquet of any sort had ever appeared there. This bouquet had a stalk of garlic stuck in the middle of the symbols of loyalty and trust. He had a sense of humour, her Mycroft.

At Baker Street, Mrs Hudson told them all about her puzzling ordeal, from which she had emerged slightly muzzy-headed but unscathed. John and Sherlock made a fuss of her, though with Sherlock that mostly consisted of him praising her scones as he helped himself to more. She scolded him for a greedy guts and John laughed at the pair of them.

Sherlock frequently found he was touching John – shoulders, arms, hands – and John kept looking at Sherlock like he was a miracle. Not much different to usual, Mrs Hudson would have said, if anyone had asked, but nobody did.

Greg Lestrade was more than a little annoyed he had so little recall of his own kidnapping. He was still puzzled by the strange pattern of the bruise on his temple, which was in a ring around a patch of unblemished tissue. He was lucky, said the doctors, to have escaped without a cracked skull. He didn’t feel lucky, really. He felt _suspicious_.

And that night, Sally dreamed.

She dreamed of going to the theatre in her pyjamas, and being annoyed because she didn’t like the theatre, and then suddenly she was selling ice cream at interval, a job she’d had during the holidays when she was a teenager and liked because she got free ice cream out of it, only in the dream the ice cream was liquorice and bacon flavoured, which was weird, but she liked it anyway, because _ice cream_ , and then the foyer turned into a beach and she swam and could breathe under the water and a lobster told her in sign language about the ice cream kiosk on the moon and she flew up high, with the lobster and… well, it was all pretty much the usual kind of dream she always had after too much spicy Indian food.

But at the end, at the very end of the night, Sally dreamed she held a bright and flaming sword, which made her frightened and proud all at once.

And then, she simply slept, without dreams, and it was the most peaceful, refreshing sleep she’d had in her entire life.


End file.
